How to begin? I have wanted to read books by Octavia Butler for years and somehow never picked one up until now. Wild Seed wasn’t’ an easy read, although the language is beautiful, the characters are compelling and change over time (in many ways!), and the plot is complex and interesting. The story takes place over several hundred years and the characters mostly live day-to-day having children, falling sick, getting married, eating food – with powerful ancient beings living day-to-day next to more “ordinary” psychic […]
Deep wells of loneliness
Silas Jones and Larry Ott are two sides of a coin in a small Mississippi town. They meet as children, where Larry is the town comic book reading, horror aficionado weirdo and Silas is the new kid – poor, black, and new to country life. They become friends for a time, bonding over proximity, loneliness, and a shared love of nature and horror. Over time, however, Silas moves on to sports and other friends. Fast forward to adulthood, where ‘Scary’ Larry is a pariah because […]
I wanted to savor it…
This is not my favorite Jackson Brodie book, but Kate Atkinson’s When Will There Be Good News? was a wonderful read – especially for the character Reggie. Despite the murders, train wrecks, kidnappings, etc., it is a surprisingly positive book, with lonely characters finding ways to make families, wild goose chases resolving not in surrender but in more wild goose chases, and characters developing and growing in satisfactory ways. Atkinson writes beautifully. She has a witty style and focuses on developing characters that she clearly […]
Mmmmmm. Butter chicken.
My rating for this is probably a 3 for the first 1/2 and a 4 for the second. I picked out Tarquin Hall’s The Case of the Deadly Butter Chicken: A Vish Puri Mystery almost a year ago when I was visiting Macalaster College with my niece. I hadn’t read any of the other books in the series, but thought it looked amusing and I love books that really place you in a location. It wasn’t necessary for me to read previous entries to understand […]
Oh SNAP!
So many years ago, when the world was much different than it is now, I read Postmortem by Patricia Cornwell and was so thrilled and scared and delighted. The character development wasn’t much, but the medical examiner trope was pretty fresh. Also, the settings were not the usual Boston/LA/New York kinds of settings. Her Kay Scarpetta series started going off the rails for me as everyone fell in love with Dr. Scarpetta and she got surlier and surlier. I confess I haven’t read many of […]
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